Replaces VMware vSphere
European alternatives to VMware vSphere
European hypervisors for servers and private clouds
Browse the category: Hypervisors
VMware vSphere is an enterprise virtualisation platform. It runs virtual machines on physical hosts and adds centralised management of compute, storage and networking, with live migration, high availability and the operational tooling that datacentre teams build their procedures around. It has been a fixture in enterprise datacentres for many years, and VMware is now part of Broadcom.
A hypervisor is a long commitment: licensing terms, support and roadmap decide what your datacentre costs for years to come. Recent changes in this market have pushed many European organisations to review the layer underneath their servers, and sovereignty requirements point in the same direction. A European alternative to VMware vSphere is already in production use elsewhere. Proxmox VE is widely deployed, Vates VMS comes out of the Xen ecosystem, and SUSE Virtualization is a further option.
European options 3
Our pick
Proxmox VE
Open source hypervisor from Austria
Proxmox VE, short for Proxmox Virtual Environment, is a hypervisor from the Austrian company Proxmox. It is open source, so it can be installed and run without a licence fee, and the company sells subscription plans that add support.
AustriaOpen source
France
GermanyQuestions
Can I migrate existing virtual machines?
Virtual machines can generally be converted between platforms, and Proxmox VE and Vates VMS both document import paths from common formats. Test with a few non critical machines before planning a full move.
Is commercial support available?
Proxmox VE, Vates VMS and SUSE Virtualization are all backed by companies that sell subscriptions and support. Ask about response times and the scope of coverage for your environment.
Do these support clustering and high availability?
Clustering, live migration and failover are standard expectations in this category and are described in each product's documentation. Compare them against the specific availability targets you have to meet.